Your team is growing, sprint planning is becoming chaotic, and everyone is wondering which tickets actually have priority. Sound familiar? Then you’re probably looking for a tool that offers more structure than an endless Slack thread or a Google Sheet full of tasks.
Jira is the tool that many software teams eventually encounter. It’s the industry standard for agile project management, but also notorious for its complexity. In this review, we dive into what Jira really can do, what it costs, and whether it’s worth it for your team.
Jira: the company
Jira was developed by Atlassian, an Australian company founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar. What started as an issue-tracking tool for software teams has grown into an ecosystem of products, including Confluence, Trello, and Bitbucket.
Atlassian has more than 260,000 customers worldwide, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. The company’s philosophy revolves around collaboration and transparency, which you can see in how Jira is set up: everything is visible, traceable, and configurable.
The company is publicly traded and is known for its focus on self-service and community support, especially for smaller teams. This means you have to figure out a lot yourself, but it also means there’s a huge community with tutorials, plugins, and best practices.
Who is Jira for?
Jira is built for software teams that work with agile methodologies like Scrum or Kanban. If you’re planning sprints, managing backlogs, and regularly need to report on velocity and burndown charts, then this is a good fit.
The tool is especially popular with:
- Development teams working with complex workflows and multiple releases
- DevOps teams that need integration with CI/CD tools like Jenkins or GitHub Actions
- Larger organizations that want granular control over permissions and processes
- Teams already working with other Atlassian products like Confluence or Bitbucket
Where Jira is less suitable: small teams that just want a simple task list, marketing or sales teams without technical background, or projects where speed and simplicity are more important than control and configuration.
If you’re wondering whether Jira is too heavy for your situation, the answer is probably yes. The tool requires an investment in time and learning curve before you can really get the hang of it.
What can Jira do?
Jira is packed with features, from basic task management to advanced reporting and automation. These are the key capabilities:
- Scrum and Kanban boards – You can choose between a sprint-based Scrum approach or continuous flow with Kanban. Both boards are fully customizable with custom statuses, swimlanes, and filters.
- Roadmaps – Visual timelines to share long-term planning with stakeholders. Useful for showing when features will go live without everyone having to scroll through tickets.
- Agile reporting – Built-in reports like burndown charts, velocity tracking and cumulative flow diagrams. Perfect for retrospectives and sprint reviews.
- Customizable workflows – You can customize every status, transition and rule. From simple “To Do → Done” to complex approval flows with multiple teams.
- Automations – Triggers and actions to automate repetitive tasks. Think of: auto-assign for specific labels, notifications for status changes, or bulk updates based on filters.
- Backlog management – Prioritize and estimate tasks with story points or time estimates. You can organize epics, stories and subtasks hierarchically.
- Integrations – More than 3,000 apps in the Atlassian Marketplace, from Slack and Microsoft Teams to Figma and Salesforce. Plus native integrations with GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket.
The strength of Jira lies in its flexibility. You can completely bend the tool to your process, but that’s also the pitfall: without a clear setup, it quickly becomes a mess.
What does Jira cost?
Jira has a free plan and two paid options. Prices are per user per month, and become lower if you pay annually.
Free plan
Free for up to 10 users. You get 2 GB storage, access to Scrum and Kanban boards, and community support. The limitations: no audit logs, no advanced permissions, and a limit of 100 email notifications per day. For small teams or to test this is fine, but as soon as you grow you quickly hit the limits.
Standard plan
$1.79 per user per month with annual payment ($1.15 monthly). You get 250 GB storage, unlimited email notifications, user roles and permissions, and priority support during business hours. This is the starting point for serious teams.
Premium plan
$1.33 per user per month with annual payment ($1 monthly). Adds: unlimited storage, advanced roadmaps, sandbox environments for testing, 24/7 support and audit logs for compliance. For larger organizations or teams with strict security requirements.
There’s also an Enterprise plan for organizations that want to run self-hosted or need extra control, but you need to contact them for a quote.
All paid plans have a 7-day free trial. You can cancel at any time, and you only pay for active users.
Compared to alternatives like Linear or Asana, Jira is not cheap, especially as your team grows. But the price also reflects the enterprise-grade features and huge ecosystem.
What should you watch out for?
Jira is powerful, but not without frustrations. These are the main pain points users encounter:
The learning curve is steep. New users regularly get lost in the amount of options and settings. What feels intuitive in tools like Trello or Notion often requires looking up documentation in Jira. For non-technical team members, this can be a dealbreaker.
The interface feels sluggish. Especially with large projects containing hundreds of tickets, Jira becomes slow. Pages load slowly, filters take a long time and the UI feels outdated compared to modern alternatives. Many users call it “bloatware” because there are so many features they never use.
Configuration is a full-time job. To set up Jira properly, you need an admin who understands how workflows, schemes, and permissions work. For small teams without a dedicated admin, this quickly becomes a bottleneck. One wrong setting and suddenly developers can’t move tickets anymore.
It’s overkill for simple projects. If you just want to check off a list of tasks, Jira is too heavy. The tool forces you to think about sprints, story points, and workflows, even when you don’t need them. For marketing or sales teams, it feels like trying to hammer in a nail with a bulldozer.
Email notifications are overwhelming. By default, Jira sends a notification for every update. If you’re involved in multiple projects, your inbox fills up. You can adjust this, but that also requires configuration.
Despite these drawbacks, Jira remains the industry standard, mainly because the benefits for large teams outweigh the frustrations. But if you’re a small, fast-moving team, there are better options.
What do others think?
Opinions about Jira are divided, and this mainly has to do with the type of team and expectations.
What people appreciate: The control and visibility are unmatched. Teams that need to manage complex processes, such as releases with multiple dependencies or compliance requirements, swear by Jira. The ecosystem of plugins and integrations makes it possible to support virtually any conceivable process. And for DevOps teams, the integration with CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions or Jenkins is a game changer.
What frustrates people: The complexity and slowness come up in almost every review. Many users feel like they’re fighting the tool instead of working with it. Especially non-technical team members feel excluded because the tool is so developer-centric. And costs pile up quickly as your team grows, especially if you need premium features.
On YouTube there are various comparisons with alternatives like Linear and Asana. The consensus: Jira wins on functionality and scalability, but loses on speed and user-friendliness. If you’re a modern, fast team that values design and UX, Jira feels like a step back in time.
A frequently heard complaint is also that Atlassian has discontinued the Server version, forcing teams to migrate to Cloud or Data Center. That has caused a lot of resistance, especially among organizations with strict data-residency requirements.
Jira alternatives
Jira doesn’t quite fit your team? These are the best alternatives and when to choose them:
- Trello – Also by Atlassian, but much simpler. Ideal for teams that want a visual Kanban board without the complexity of workflows and sprints. Choose this if you don’t need to manage agile processes and just want to move tasks from “To Do” to “Done”.
- Linear – Built for speed and modern software teams. The interface is lightning fast, the UX is intuitive and you need much less configuration. Choose this if you want a streamlined tool without the overhead of Jira, but specifically for software development.
- Asana – More broadly applicable than Jira, with focus on non-technical teams. Better support for lists, timelines and portfolio management. Choose this if you need project management for marketing, sales or operations instead of pure development.
Other options worth considering: Monday.com for visual workflows, ClickUp for all-in-one productivity, and Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse) as a middle ground between Jira and Linear.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jira free to use?
Yes, Jira has a free plan for teams up to 10 users. You get access to core features like Scrum and Kanban boards, 2 GB storage and community support. For larger teams or advanced features you need a paid plan.
What’s the difference between Jira Software and Jira Service Management?
Jira Software is intended for development teams working with Agile and Scrum. Jira Service Management is designed for IT support and helpdesks, with features like incident management and SLA tracking. They are separate products with different pricing.
Can I self-host Jira?
The Server version is no longer available since February 2024. You can choose Jira Data Center if you want a self-managed solution, but that’s only available for enterprise customers and requires a separate license.
Conclusion
Jira is the industry standard for a reason: it offers unmatched control, scalability, and integration capabilities for software teams. If you work with complex workflows, multiple releases, and strict reporting requirements, then Jira is hard to beat.
But that power comes with a price: a steep learning curve, a slow interface, and the need for a dedicated administrator. For small teams or non-technical users, Jira often feels like overkill. And compared to modern alternatives like Linear or Notion, the UX feels outdated.
Choose Jira if you need an enterprise-grade tool and are willing to invest time in configuration and onboarding. Choose an alternative if speed, simplicity, and user-friendliness are more important than granular control.
The 7-day free trial is enough to test if Jira fits your team. Set up a test project, invite a few team members, and see if you can get through the learning curve. If it clicks, you have a tool that scales to enterprise level. If not, at least you’ll know why so many teams go looking for alternatives.
